The Giants’ Barry Bonds, left, talking yesterday with the Sox’ Hideki Okajima, has become a poster child for what’s wrong in pro sports.

AP / Eric Risberg

There were two excellent stories about steroid abuse in yesterday’s Journal sports section. One dealt with steroid testing — or the lack thereof — at the high-school level. The other pointed out that the fact we now need to test our high school athletes for steroids shows dramatically how parents, educators, and society as a whole have failed “miserably.”

Tonight, in what I’ll describe as either a bold assumption or a wild guess, I’m predicting that Barry Bonds receives a standing ovation when he’s introduced to the crowd at AT&T Park for the All-Star Game in San Francisco.

And, if that’s the case — and I’ll bet it is — then what is the real message, the one that truly counts, the one that most people believe in?

Is it that steroids are harmful? That they are bad, not only for one’s health, but also for one’s character? That using steroids, or any other performance-enhancing drug, is cheating?

Or is it that winning, that compiling great statistics, is paramount? That the end justifies the means?

Do you really have to ask?

Foremost among the things I’ve learned in more than 30 years of covering sports is that when values are in competition with winning, values almost always lose.

How many examples do you want? How many do you need to convince you of what just about everybody already knows, but hardly anybody wants to admit?

The NCAA loves to tout its “student-athletes,” but has no problem with players, especially in basketball, enrolling for one year, with no intent of ever graduating, in order to prepare themselves for a professional career — thus making the college nothing more than an unsubsidized minor-league franchise.

But if it leads to a Final Four appearance, well, everything’s cool.

And how many times have we read of universities admitting students solely because of their athletic ability, then placing them in classes where they have to do little if any work, classes where they may not even have to show up, classes in which tutors write their papers? That falls under the category of “earning” a degree, which enables the college to boast of its outstanding graduation rate.

Not that such things matter when compared to, say, getting a spot in a Bowl Championship Series football game.

And so most people look the other way. They ignore what’s obvious. Or dismiss it with a wink and a knowing nod.

Or, as obviously has been the case for many years now in regard to steroids, they say simply: “We don’t care.”

The powers-that-be in Major League Baseball couldn’t have been happier when the artificially enhanced Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, of corked-bat fame, battled to reach the 70-homer mark in 1998.

Bonds saw that and apparently decided he also wanted some of that attention, that recognition, that adulation.

Players began to get startlingly bigger and stronger, and the naïve assumed they’d just been working hard in the weight room.

There also was a story recently that cited how MLB was quietly attempting to downplay the outrage in some quarters over Bonds’ artificially aided pursuit of Henry Aaron’s revered home-run record.

When purveyors of MLB-licensed merchandise were approached by entrepreneurs selling items poking fun at Bonds, the none-too-subtle indication from MLB was that, while they couldn’t stop their vendors from selling such items, they were, of course, free to take their business elsewhere in the future.

Money, as it almost always does, triumphed. Rare was the vendor who was willing to stand on principle when the bottom line was involved.

Right down the line, it always seems to be that way — from youth sports, through high school and college, and then in the professional ranks.

In almost every sport, at almost every level, it’s all about doing whatever you have to do to gain an advantage; to do whatever it takes to win, as long as you don’t get caught.

And it is, of course, always the “other guy” who’s cheating. It’s our opponents’ team that has the bad apples.

Ask Patriots fans a year ago what they thought of Randy Moss, and most likely would have replied: “A jerk.” But he’s New England’s jerk now, and so many Pats fans have become more “understanding” of Moss, more accepting of him, now that he’ll be playing in Foxboro.

Why? Because they think he’ll help the franchise win another Super Bowl.

Just like “student-athletes” who are “students” in name only. Just like athletes who use steroids and other artificial, body-building supplements.

On the one hand, we decry such practices. And yet tonight the fans in San Francisco will be clapping their hands while standing on their feet in tribute to Bonds.

jdonald@projo.com